


Prayer of Serenity

by BwayGirl17



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season 9, Season 9 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1735460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BwayGirl17/pseuds/BwayGirl17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has to deal with what happened to his brother. How he does that is his choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prayer of Serenity

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of Season 9. Also Wincest if you squint and tilt your head. Unbeta'd, so if you discover anything that needs to be changed, please let me know! Thanks for reading :)

“Heya Sammy.”

  
He says it so nonchalantly, like nothing has changed. It’s just like the day he came back from Hell, all those years ago. Back before the apocalypse, before they’d lost everything.

  
Before Sam had lost him.

  
Now, standing amid the blood and corpses, Sam wondered if he’d ever had a chance saving his brother.

  
It started out simply enough. He’d heard through the grapevine about a vampire nest a few hours out of the bunker, and he took the case. There was no point in wallowing now that his brother was gone.

  
He’d shown up to see Dean wielding the Blade, hacking vampires into pieces before him. Sam had stayed in the shadows, observing.

  
To the untrained eye, it didn’t seem like there was anything different about his brother. It was the same fighting style, the same macho bravado, and the same devilish smirk. But Sam could tell that something was different.

  
The first time he got a look at his brother’s eyes, his first thought was that he’d miss the green.

  
The second thought was that the black suited his brother.

  
Now, staring across a room of bloodied carcasses, Sam felt an unusual sense of calm. His brother stood before him, hand still gripped tight around the blade, vampire blood smeared across his face.

  
Dean’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Isn’t this the part where you yell at me?”

  
Sam swallowed, then shook his head.

  
“Really? Are you sure?” Dean continued, casually cleaning the Blade on his shirt. “Because usually this kind of thing leads to you bitching about my impulsive nature, that you didn’t really want this, that it was better off before, and how could I be so stupid and blah, blah, blah….”

  
He rattled them off in a matter of fact tone, like he was reciting their grocery list. Sam flinched at the words anyway. Even in this new form, his brother knew him all too well.

  
“But the thing of it is Sammy,” Dean went on, “This time it wasn’t even my fault. Sure, I took on the Mark, but after Metatron stabbed me? I had made my peace. I knew it was over for me. It’s Crowley’s fault I’m still here.”

  
“This isn’t about fault,” Sam muttered through clenched teeth.

  
Dean’s grin widened. “Right. Of course not.”

  
He sidled up closer to Sam, eyes flickering demon black. “If it ain’t about fault,” he whispered, “then tell me, why are you here, if you’re not gonna save me?”

  
Sam swallowed. He tried to tell himself this wasn’t Dean, this wasn’t his brother, but the evidence before him was overwhelming. Sam’s eyes dropped to the cut just below Dean’s elbow, the one blow the vamps got in before they were decimated. Blood oozed out from the injury, sliding down his brother’s arm. He licked his lips.

  
Dean noticed his brother’s gaze and let out a low chuckle. “Oh, I see. You’re having flashbacks to your summer of love with Ruby. Am I right?”

  
Sam’s eyes fluttered out of focus, and he blinked to try and come back to the present. “What are you talking about?”

  
Dean pressed uncomfortably close, eyes still dark. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  
Sam’s fingers twitched. He could never forget that feeling, that power surging through him every time he’d used Ruby. He wondered briefly if there was such a thing as Demon Blood Anonymous. _God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….._

  
Dean laughed again, slowly moving back across the room. “Well, the reunion’s been nice ‘n’ all, but I’d better get going.”

  
_The courage to change the things I can…._

  
“Will I see you again?”

  
Dean paused, then shrugged slightly. “If you’re lucky.”

  
The door slid shut with a heavy thud behind him, and for a moment Sam felt like crying.

  
_And the wisdom to know the difference._

***

After the vamp nest, Sam went back to the bunker to get completely shit faced. He broke out every bottle of alcohol they had, and proceeded to drink himself into oblivion.

  
Halfway through the second bottle of whiskey, he let himself slip back into the memory of Ruby. Granted, he’d lost his psychic abilities once Azazel was dead, but demon blood was different. Demon blood was not discriminatory; it gave you power whether you were already cursed or not.

  
He groaned and slid back in his chair. God, it had felt so good.

  
Sam wondered for a moment about drug addicts. It had always seemed like once they were clean there was no going back. They were healed, cured. Sam had felt the same way after a weekend of detoxing at Bobby’s.

  
But now, here it was again. So close, he could practically taste the coppery slide of blood on his tongue. And this time, it wouldn’t be coming from some sassy little upstart hell bent on seeing Lucifer rise. It was his brother.

  
Sam would be an idiot if he said he hadn’t noticed how pretty his brother was. No matter what dinky little Podunk town he was in, Dean always got stares. Sam remembered spying through the kitchen door one night when he was fourteen, watching his brother and the waitress from the diner down the street going at it on the couch. At one point he’d accidentally let out a small groan, only to have Dean look up and catch him. But there was no yelling or scolding. Instead, Sam got a wicked smirk and a wink, and a show fit for a high-end porno.

  
It wasn’t that Sam had ever been attracted to Dean. It was just something about the fact they’d lived inside each other’s pockets their entire lives. They had a closeness no one else understood, let alone had ever witnessed. More than the fact that they continued to sacrifice themselves for one another, Sam didn’t know how to exist without his brother. He defined himself in terms of Dean, and that included his cursed nature.

  
Dean had been Daddy’s Little Soldier. Sam had been the Boy with the Demon Blood.

  
Even after the screaming matches, the fights, and the escape to college, Sam could count on Dean coming back to put him together again. Sam was an idiot for thinking it would always be that way—Always Sam ruining things and always Dean coming back to fix it.

  
How appropriate that the one time Dean had left Sam high and dry for good would be the one time Sam wanted him to come back.

  
That night, Sam plowed his way through two bottles of whiskey and one bottle of bourbon before passing out.

***

The next morning, Sam busied himself with cleaning the bunker. He collected the odds and ends strewn throughout the desks and tables, sorting through files and reshelving books. If he ran across anything that even remotely reminded him of his brother, he placed it in Dean’s bedroom. He always made sure the room was locked, and kept the key safely in his pocket.

  
Sam had a shoebox he used for odds and ends he found while cleaning. Over the last few days it had gathered things like old keys, shoelaces, decks of cards, and even a pocket size pin up girl.

  
He sorted through the odds and ends of an old kitchen drawer, and proceeded to dump whatever was left in his shoebox. One piece fell in with a loud clunk, so Sam pulled it out to inspect.

  
It was larger than a coin, and heavier than any money Sam was familiar with. His fingers traced over the letters and ridges, cleaning the dirt so he could read it.

  
Inside the triangle on one side, he saw V stamped out, surrounded by the words unity, service, and recovery. It was a sobriety chip.

  
He took the chip into the bathroom, polishing it up till he could easily read the inscriptions. The chip indicated five years of clean living, along with the prayer on the back.

  
As he washed, his mind floated back to his brother, and his demon blood. Sam tried to push the thought away, the image of sitting before his brother, hungrily sucking the blood from his arm.

  
His fingers traced the printed numeral five again. It had been nearly five years since Sam had kicked his demon blood habit. The irony of finding the coin was not lost on him.

***

As the weeks progressed, Sam got progressively more anti social. It wasn’t about grieving for his brother. It was simply the fact that everyone he had ever really cared about was dead.

  
For the first time in his life, Sam was well and truly alone.

  
He carried the sobriety chip in his pocket for companionship, if nothing else.

  
It came to be a comfort object, a source of solace. Even though he’d never set foot into an AA meeting, he would find himself chanting out the prayer late at night. Even when completely hammered, he would repeat the words till they were nothing but sound. He told himself it was helping him deal with losing his brother.

  
_…accept the things I cannot change…._

  
He chanted it in the middle of the night, lying in bed in a cold sweat after a nightmare filled with black eyes and dripping blood.

  
_…courage to change the things I can…._

  
He sorted books. He wrote files, he updated data. He stopped cleaning the weapons, and started taking calls for research and information. Five years ago he might have obsessed over finding a cure. But this was not five years ago, and Sam was no longer looking for a way to save his brother.

  
He was just looking for a way to save himself.

***

Three months after the incident at the vampire nest, Sam came home from restocking supplies to hear someone whistling from the library.

  
He pulled his gun from the back of his jeans. He may have been demoted to librarian, but Sam would be damned if he’d be caught unprepared.

  
The tune sounded familiar somehow. Sam paused just outside the door, listening. Digging in the back of his brain, he tried to come up with the memory tied to that melody. A snatch of lyrics rose from the depths.

  
_Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay_   
_But now it’s time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way…._

  
He sighed. How could he possibly be so stupid?

  
The whistling stopped. “Are you going to come in, or just wait outside the door like a creep?”

  
Sam jumped before slowly walking into the room.

  
“ ’S about time you got in here,” Dean said. It looked so ordinary to have him there, flipping through books and walking around the table. “You been up to anything fun?”

  
Sam shrugged. “Cleaning, mostly.”

  
Dean nodded. “Looks nice. Must be doing a good job.”

  
They stood in silence for a moment. Sam couldn’t decide if he should throw his arms around Dean’s neck or do an exorcism.

  
“How did you--?” He suddenly asked, feeling himself blush with embarrassment as the words flew out of his mouth.

  
“Oh, the demon proofing?” Dean finished. He shrugged. “Not that hard to work around. Why aren’t you freaking out yet?”

  
Sam’s mouth twitched into a small smile. “I don’t know, really. I think the part of me that wants you to be my brother is hoping that you aren’t what they say you are.”

  
“A demon?” his brother clarified. He flicked his eyes black. “Sammy, you and I both know there’s no coming back from this.”

  
Sam swallowed the lump gathering in his throat. “Yeah. I know.”

  
Neither of them said anything. Sam wished he could tell him how much he missed him, how he wanted to go back to hunting together, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

  
Dean paused, licking his lips. “I should probably get out of here.”

  
“Right. Yeah. Things to do, monsters to kill,” Sam replied, flinching inwardly at his lame joke.

  
Dean smirked. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  
He turned to walk out, but hesitated before reaching the door. “I was gonna just go ahead and take this… A little memento, I guess. But it seems a little unfair.”

  
A small object came sailing across the room. Sam barely had time to recover and catch it. It was the sobriety chip.

  
“You never struck me as the alcoholic type Sammy,” Dean went on.

  
He smiled slightly. “Yeah, well, I’ve got bigger problems.”

  
 _Like not being able to let you go,_ his mind volunteered.

  
“Yeah,” Dean chuckled. “Don’t I know it.”

  
He went to walk out, but Sam cut him off. “Dean?”

  
“Yeah Sammy?”

“Do you ever think… I mean, would you ever… Is there any way--?”

  
Dean sighed, suddenly hardening. “You should work on that prayer, Sammy. Isn’t there something in there about letting go with what you can’t change?”

  
The door clicked, and Sam finally let the tears fall.

***

A few days after that, Sam got a call. It wasn’t a number he recognized, but he picked up anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hey Sammy,” Dean’s gruff voice crackled over the line.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” A pause. Neither of them breathed. “Look, Sammy, I, uh—“

“Where are you?” Sam cut his brother off. It didn’t even matter at this point. He knew the definition of addiction. You didn’t feel normal unless you had that one solitary thing that made you sane. And if that was the case?

Sam was addicted to his brother.

“I’m in Alliance, Nebraska. Just a little ways out from you.” There was another beat. “Look, I’m not saying—“

“It doesn’t matter Dean,” Sam said. “I’m on my way.”

He hung up before he could change his mind.

***

Sam spent nearly the entire drive cursing himself. This was dumb. If he was trying to figure out how to let go of his brother, driving across a state and a half was not the way to do it.

 _But Dean called you,_ a little voice in his head rationalized. _That means something._

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Sam told the empty car.

The truth was that Sam felt paralyzed. He thought back to an old writing class he took at Stanford. The professor had explained about dyads, or paired opposites. They were things like hot and cold, good and evil, things that couldn’t be defined without describing the opposite.

Black and white.

Light and dark.

Sam and Dean.

Without his brother to define him, Sam had nothing. He was no longer the tall, gangly nerdy brother, because there was no rugged, handsome spunky brother to go along with it.

He kept telling himself he was going for closure.

Don’t forget the demon blood, whispered the little voice in his head.

Sam shook his head violently. Maybe if he told himself enough times that this had nothing to do with the pull of demon blood, eventually it would come true.

He pulled the sobriety chip out of his pocket and twisted it between his fingers. Just in case.

***

Turned out there was a bad case of Wendigos in Alliance, Nebraska. A handful of them had been feeding on tourists, before Sam and Dean managed to take them out.

It was a bloody fight, and the boys were left limping back to the car covered in no small amount of guts and soot.  
Still, there was a certain amount of euphoria to it.

By the time they reached the Impala, both boys were damn near giggling. “Did you see that?” Dean was saying. “God, I haven’t been in a fight that nasty in ages.”

Sam nodded. “Me either.” He winced as he stretched his muscles. “I forgot how much everything hurts.”

Dean didn’t say anything. In the pervading silence, Sam turned to his brother with a questioning look. It wasn’t an expression he usually saw on Dean’s face, but there it was, plain as day.

Longing.

Dean cleared his throat and turned the car on. “Right, well, we’ll take you back to the motel. Get you cleaned up. You’ll probably be back to the bunker by lunch tomorrow.”

“Great,” Sam said lamely. He didn’t ask to stay. He didn’t say Wow, this was great, just like old times, huh? Because he knew what would happen next.

He wasn’t ready to tell his brother good bye again.

***

“For God’s sake Sammy, just hold still!” Dean was straddling Sam, trying to stitch a long cut down his left shoulder blade.

“Well if you’d go faster, I wouldn’t be in such discomfort!” Sam shot back. The adrenaline had worn off, and he was finally getting ticked off. It was unfair to dangle Dean in front of him, spend a few hours hunting a Wendigo, back like it used to be, just to be reminded that they could no longer salt the doors or check the demon traps, because his brother was a demon.

“Shut up, you big baby,” Dean muttered, tying off the last stitch. “Now, was that so hard?”

Sam shook it off and started to sit up. “God, all this time later and you still suck at sewing me up.”

Dean smiled broadly. “Wouldn’t want to change everything, now would we?”

That was when he noticed the way Sam was staring at him. Dean hadn’t had time to shower yet, and had a few nasty cuts of his own. A few of them were still weeping blood.

Sam’s breath got heavy and his mind went cloudy. Where was that sobriety chip when he needed it?

The thing about having your brother become a demon was the drastic change in morals. Dean had always had questionable boundaries when it came to right and wrong, but he always made sure to do the right thing for Sam. But things had changed. And now it looked like the right thing for Sam would be to let him latch on and taste the demon blood pumping through his veins.

Dean stepped forward slowly, pulling the small butterfly knife out of his boot. “Sammy….”

Sam licked his lips. He hadn’t even been close to demon blood for years, why was this affecting him now?

 _Because it’s Dean,_ the voice in his head reminded him. _It’s always been Dean._ No matter what has happened, Dean has always been the exception. Demon blood should be no different.

Dean dragged the blade across the inside of his arm, making a nice clean cut. The groan that came out of Sam was damn near erotic.

“Come on,” Dean murmured. “You know how good it feels… Come on, Sam. You and me. It’s always been us against the world. Maybe now we can finally have the upper hand.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “Come with me Sam. Just give in…”

Sam gently leaned forward, placing his lips just below the cut. His brother tasted like salt and leather. He slid further up, feeling the warm wetness slipping onto his tongue.

“Dean…”

That was it. All he had needed was one taste, one drop, and it was over. He sucked at his brother’s arm like a starving man, gulping down mouthful after mouthful of blood.

Dean moaned, eyes involuntarily switching to black. “Go on, baby boy. Feels so good…”

Sam could already feel the changes. The way sparks flew at the corners of his vision, the heat that surged along his spine. Oh God yes…

This was so much better than anything he’d had with Ruby, more powerful, more potent. He drank until he couldn’t handle anymore, and proceeded to collapse on the bed.

Dean chuckled. “You should see yourself, little brother. All that red smeared on your face… It’s a good look for you.”

Sam was coming down from his initial high, but could feel the demon blood pulsing through him. He groaned again. “God, Dean, just give me more…”

Dean climbed next to him, drawing the blade back to his arm. “Whatever you want, baby boy.”

***

Marcella worked at the diner on Wednesday and Thursday nights, from four till eleven. Usually there were the regulars, the same seven customers who came in every night to get their dinner or their pie. Marcella liked taking care of them. They tipped her well.

It was a perfectly normal Thursday night. It was about ten, and most of the regulars had filed out. There were a few tables of late night travelers, but they only asked for coffee so Marcella left them alone. That was when the two men walked in. If Marcella hadn’t been at work, she would have pulled up a chair just so she could swoon over them.

They sat in her section. The tall one, with the long hair, kept leaning closer to the other. At first she thought it was some kind of social anxiety thing, but then she noticed the predatory stares he was giving the other customers. Something about the look in his eye sent shivers down her spine.

She couldn’t hear what the two were saying, but the shorter one kept looking at him with the most loving eyes. He kept saying something about “just hold on, baby boy, we’ll get back to the motel and I’ll let you bleed me dry.” Marcella didn’t want to ask what they meant by that.

A few moments later, a man in a trench coat arrived. He took no notice of Marcella, but strode straight over to the men. “Where have you been?”

It was the shorter one who answered. “Around. We’ve been traveling. Sorry we haven’t been at your beck and call.” Something about his tone made Marcella believe he wasn’t sorry at all.

“Dean,” the man in the trench coat pleaded. “You know this isn’t the end. We can find a way to fix this.”

The man smiled, but it gave Marcella a cold chill. “C’mon Cas. Lighten up. I say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Marcella hadn’t meant to be spying, but she couldn’t help herself. She hid behind the kitchen door, peering out at the odd conversation. She could have sworn she saw the man’s eyes go black.

“And don’t think about calling your attack dogs on us,” the man continued. “Sam will destroy them before you even say go.”

Sure enough, the long haired man closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and Marcella gasped.

The room filled with black smoke. The customer at other tables writhed and shrieked as the smoke poured from their mouths. There was a flash of lightning, and five bodies dropped to the floor.

“Sam, this isn’t you,” the man in the trench coat was saying. “You have to stop before this gets very, very dangerous.”

“Stop what?” The one he called Sam taunted. “All I did was accept what I couldn’t change. And trust me, it has given me more power and more strength than anything before.” He smiled, but it was the smile of a predator going in for the kill. “You should try it, Cas. The whole giving in to instinct thing. God, it feels so good.”

Marcella peeked through the kitchen window at the man. There was something odd about his smile… His teeth look stained, but not from coffee or cigarettes. They looked distinctly more…red.

The black eyed one sipped his coffee before turning to the one in the trench coat. “Get out now Cas. Before I do something I don’t want to do.”

The man in the coat looked pained for a moment. “Dammit Dean,” he muttered. “I’ll save you. I’ll save you both. Even if it means damnation for the rest of us.”

If Marcella didn’t know any better, she’d say he disappeared after that.

The two men still sat in their booth, casually sipping coffee.

“Well, that’s the end of that,” said the short one lazily.

“Almost,” corrected the one with the long hair.

The short one’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a woman standing behind the kitchen door,” the long haired one replied. “We wouldn’t want any loose ends, now would we?”

Marcella saw the man smile at her, then a flash of light before her body hit the ground.

***

There are rumors of two grifters traveling in the Midwest. Death follows them like a shadow. They leave nothing but ashes and destruction in their wake. People say they see black smoke rising up from the ground after they’ve come.

Demons go running from the Winchesters. Not for the reasons they used to, though. These days the brothers are more deadly than any power in hell or on earth.

The Boy with the Demon Blood.

The Demon with the Mark of Cain.

They are an unstoppable force.

There is no line between good and evil anymore. The good die while the innocent suffer. Begging for mercy will do you no good.  
They are not on the side of Hell. They are too merciful for Hell. They are not on the side of the angels either. They are filled with too much darkness for that.

They take the world for what it is. They see the corruption and evil, but they have given up trying to rescue it. Now they only work in damage control. Destroy everything and start from scratch. Many times they’ll say a prayer before they kill. It reminds them of why they do what they do. They’ve accepted what they are. They know they can never change. But what they can do, is give humanity a second chance.

 _God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,_  
 _The courage to change the things I can_  
 _And the wisdom to know the difference_.

If you get close enough, you can see the way they look at each other. You’ll never see love like that on earth. That kind of devotion only exists for soulmates.

If you get any closer, you’ll see how the older one has eyes that go black, and how the younger one has stains that make his teeth turn red.

The last thing you’ll see is the way they smile at you. It’s the smile of men possessed. And if you’re lucky, you’ll die before you have time to scream.


End file.
